Moddage
Aluminum
- Joined
- Jan 23, 2021
I'm quite up on all the details of the 10EE at this point... I have a significant number of research hours into these lathes at this point, mostly on this forum prior to creating my account, some from Vintage Machinery, and some from just googling and hitting a bunch of links and sorting through for good stuff.
I had a small photocopy of the original wiring diagram and asked monarch for a better copy and they happily emailed it over. I spent a number of hours colorizing most of the primary circuits to make it easier to understand, but funny enough that was AFTER I had already sorted out enough of the electrical to get it to run in forward.
There's a good possibility this will be receiving a DC drive conversion, I have single phase power at home and presently have to Drill-Start the 3ph AC generator assembly when I need to turn something. It's definitely a hacky workaround for the time being, but it works and the back-EMF even runs the coolant pump if I want.
As far as I can tell this lathe was delivered to the company we got it from back in 1943, purchased new, and became ours in 2020 after sitting broken for over a year and finally deemed "scrap".
The only reason I'm considering DC drive "upgrade" is an AC motor and VFD as you pointed out is a downgrade where torque is concerned so that's out, and a good friend of mine is an electrical engineer and works at a company where he has a lot of involvement in DC drive upgrades, retrofits, and new builds for industrial wire making machines, so he's quite knowledgeable about them, plus he's also into precision tooling and knows all about keeping the DC motor and it's glorious torque.
That's not fully set in stone yet, I considered building a capacitor based start-run box for it from the resources on this forum, and then making a new contactor coil bobbin and winding a new coil for the missing one. Though I will admit, a proper DC drive conversion would free up the MG space for tooling storage and I kind of like that idea. Either way, I refuse to lose the DC drive motor, and I fully intend to make use of the big rheostat to control the speed, if I can't for some reason make that work I will mount a potentiometer to the same shaft and leave the big rheostat in place simply for the wonderful tactile feel of turning that chain driven masterpiece.
I'm in my early 30s, but I have a huge appreciation and fascination with beautiful old vintage precision machinery, and some art deco designs and feel in general. This 10EE will never be for sale for as long as I'm alive, I know that for sure.
I had a small photocopy of the original wiring diagram and asked monarch for a better copy and they happily emailed it over. I spent a number of hours colorizing most of the primary circuits to make it easier to understand, but funny enough that was AFTER I had already sorted out enough of the electrical to get it to run in forward.
There's a good possibility this will be receiving a DC drive conversion, I have single phase power at home and presently have to Drill-Start the 3ph AC generator assembly when I need to turn something. It's definitely a hacky workaround for the time being, but it works and the back-EMF even runs the coolant pump if I want.
As far as I can tell this lathe was delivered to the company we got it from back in 1943, purchased new, and became ours in 2020 after sitting broken for over a year and finally deemed "scrap".
The only reason I'm considering DC drive "upgrade" is an AC motor and VFD as you pointed out is a downgrade where torque is concerned so that's out, and a good friend of mine is an electrical engineer and works at a company where he has a lot of involvement in DC drive upgrades, retrofits, and new builds for industrial wire making machines, so he's quite knowledgeable about them, plus he's also into precision tooling and knows all about keeping the DC motor and it's glorious torque.
That's not fully set in stone yet, I considered building a capacitor based start-run box for it from the resources on this forum, and then making a new contactor coil bobbin and winding a new coil for the missing one. Though I will admit, a proper DC drive conversion would free up the MG space for tooling storage and I kind of like that idea. Either way, I refuse to lose the DC drive motor, and I fully intend to make use of the big rheostat to control the speed, if I can't for some reason make that work I will mount a potentiometer to the same shaft and leave the big rheostat in place simply for the wonderful tactile feel of turning that chain driven masterpiece.
I'm in my early 30s, but I have a huge appreciation and fascination with beautiful old vintage precision machinery, and some art deco designs and feel in general. This 10EE will never be for sale for as long as I'm alive, I know that for sure.